Dr Scott Watkins (Stream Leader, Organic Photovoltaics, Materials Science and Engineering at CSIRO), is developing next generation organic solar cells. He will talk about the new manufacturing facility in Melbourne printing solar cells at the size of an A3 sheet of paper, which are one of the largest in the world.

The Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC) has developed processes that use spray coating, reverse gravure and slot-dye coating as well as screen printing, and the technology that has gone from producing solar cells the size of a fingernail to 10cm square in three years. Dr Watkins says the new $200,000 printer has allowed the VICOSC team to jump to producing solar cells on sheets 30cm wide – right here in Melbourne!

The flexible, organic PV cells have applications in consumer devices and small integrated electronics, and into the future, they could be coated onto buildings, into windows and on roofs. Dr Watkins will join us to explain organic PV technology and how the printing process works.

Energy retail markets have been open to competition in the UK and Australia for a number of years. Price de-regulation is also a feature in the UK and in some Australian states. Many customers have benefitted from competition in energy retail markets but there have also been some concerns, particularly about vulnerable customers and “sticky customers” – those who do not switch. Over a number of years the UK regulator has developed proposals to improve the way the market works for customers. This presentation will explore some of the UK developments and the differences and similarities between the UK and Australia, particularly in terms of the impacts on vulnerable customers.

Dr Gill Owen is Research Program Leader (Consumers and Energy Markets) at Monash Sustainability Institute. She is also a member of the Australian Energy Regulator’s Consumer Challenge Panel. Gill moved to Australia in August 2012 and has published extensively on energy efficiency, smart meters, electricity demand response and fuel poverty. Until her departure from the UK Gill was also: a Non-Executive Director of the England and Wales water regulator Ofwat; a member of Ofgem’s (Great Britain energy regulator) Consumer Challenge Group for the Distribution and Transmission Price Reviews; a member of the UK Government’s Smart Meters Consumer Advisory Group; Vice Chair of the UK Government’s Fuel Poverty Advisory Group. She was a Commissioner of the UK’s Competition Commission for ten years until 2002 and was also previously a non-executive board member of Ofgem.

Thursday 29 August at 12noon-1pm, at the Brotherhood, 67 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy in Father Tucker’s Room

The innocuous seeming arrows and lines in organisational charts and process diagrams often represent time, context, and connections that are essential to the experiences people have with those organisations. The problem is that arrows and connecting lines are so ubiquitous in diagrams that they seem invisible and are often overlooked.

It is much easier–and human nature—to focus effort on “things” because they represent tangible touchpoints, such as a website, ticket machine, and so on. As a result, many forget to attend to designing the experience of the arrows and lines—the transitions from one touchpoint to the next. They are too important to let just happen. Too important they are.

This talk with Dr. Andy Polaine and discussion explores how thinking about and designing the space and time between touchpoints can help bridge the silos within organisations that prevent engaging and positive service experiences from happening.

Dr. Andy Polaine has been involved in interaction design since the early 90s and was co-founder of the award-winning new media group, Antirom, in London. He was a creative producer at Razorfish, UK and later Interactive Director at Animal Logic, Sydney. Andy was Senior Lecturer and Head of the School of Media Arts at The University of New South Wales, Sydney before moving to Germany and holds a PhD from the University of Technology, Sydney in which he examined the relationship between play and interactivity. He now divides his time between being a Lecturer and Researcher in Service Design at the Lucerne School of Art and Design in Switzerland and his work as a service/interaction design consultant and writer, working with clients such as Telenor, VW Germany and live|work. He has written over 160 articles and papers and co-authored the Rosenfeld Media book, Service Design: From Insight to Implementation. He can be found online at polaine.com and on Twitter as @apolaine.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the doom and gloom of our current food system. Amidst the pressure from foreign imports, climate change and the supermarket duopoly, we want to discover the silver lining; the hope and innovation amongst it all, and the people who are forging the way towards a Fair Food future.

As part of Fair Food Week and in partnership with the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, we are setting out to explore some of the major steps that need to be taken to build opportunity, resilience, sustainability, health and ethics back into our food system. The Fed Square Locavored Series curated by The Locavore Edition and held at The Edge at Federation Square gets to the heart of the matter, identifying the rising stars driving the future of food, farming and culinary culture. This is an unmissable Fair Food Week event with great speakers, important stories and local spirit.

And don’t forget, you can choose a ticket which includes a copy of The Field Guide to Victorian Produce, our handy guidebook which helps locavores find growers, producers and providers.

From ‘Be part of it’ buy SIXAUS: The Changemakers Festival [presented by TACSI] is a celebration of the great work happening in our community, an exploration of the ideas, techniques and technologies that are driving this change, and an invitation for everyone to get involved in creating a better future for their community and our nation. It kicks off in November and works as a ‘distributed festival’, which means that hundreds of Australia’s leading thinkers and organisations will be holding events across every state and territory. There’ll be conferences, meetups, startup weekends, webinars, workshops, and plenty more.

Over the last 10 years, Australia has exploded as a hub of social change. Driven by technology, and inspired by local and international success stories, the social innovation community is starting to tackle some of our toughest social challenges and answer some of our biggest questions. What is the good life? What is Australia’s place in our region and the world? How can we respond to climate change, to refugees, to the changing nature of employment and family? The Changemakers Festival brings these ideas out in the open and encourages strong discussion, cross-sector collaboration, and concrete action to drive social change.

In due course we’ll be sharing the full program with you, but the important question for now is, why not organise and host an event yourself? The Changemakers Festival is a chance to bring people together, to create community, share knowledge, foster collaboration and inspire imagination. If you have an idea for something for your community we’d love to hear it!

And if youneed to raise some funds to make your idea a reality you’ll be interested in the Changemakers Festival Crowdfunding Challenge on StartSomeGood, which is offering over $5,000 in bonus funds to those running crowdfunding campaigns to fuel Changemakers Festival events. But if you want to take advantage of this opportunity you need to be quick! You’ll need to submit your idea by this Friday and be ready to launch your campaign by August 21 to be part of it. You’ll have help from us and from the StartSomeGood team to make it happen though! (More about the challenge here: http://bit.ly/CMFchallenge)

>>>> The Change makers festival kicks off on the 1st – 10th November 2013 >>>> TACSI and SIXAUS who are they?

Thursday 15 August, arrive 6:45for7pm start

Join us for the screening of this inspiring documentary that tells the remarkable story of Yacouba Sawadogo, an illiterate peasant farmer, who transformed the desert and lives of thousands across West Africa.

Abstract:

Food security is increasingly recognised as a problem in developed countries like Australia as well as in developing countries of the global south, and as a problem facing cities and urban populations in these countries. Despite producing more food than is consumed in Australia, certain groups in particular, places are finding it increasingly difficult to access nutritious and healthy food at affordable prices. Moreover, whole urban populations have found their food supply lines severely compromised by major disasters such as floods and cyclones which are expected to have greater impacts as the climate changes.

This changing landscape of food production, distribution and consumption has drawn attention to the nature of contemporary urban food systems in general and to the security and resilience of urban food systems in particular. This has in turn highlighted the extent of urban agriculture and its potential to play a greater role in strengthening the food security of Australian cities and building urban resilience in a changing climate.

This report presents the results of a synthesis and integrative research project that explored these issues through a critical review of relevant literature and case study research in two cities. It had three main aims:

to increase our knowledge of the current extent of urban agriculture in Australian cities;

to review its capacity to play a more prominent role in enhancing urban food security and urban resilience and;

to assess the impacts of climate change on the capacity of urban agriculture to enhance food security and urban resilience.

The research provides much needed up-to-date information on the extent of current urban agricultural practices, a critical review of good practice in Australia and beyond and an analysis of the opportunities and barriers to the expansion of these practices, especially in the face of climate change.

How can ideas from complex systems and multiple scales inform the governance and decision-making around transport systems and infrastructure?

The focus of this Emergence Meetup will be a follow-up to the previous month’s theme of urban planning and design, but this time applied to transport systems in particular. We believe this is a timely theme given the current debate around several possible major transport infrastructure investments in Melbourne that may shape our region for decades to come.

Dr Russell Thompson will join us to give a talk on “Investigating sustainable transport in Melbourne using information portals”. This will provide illustrations of how we can discover how sustainable our local areas are using publicly available databases and analysis tools such as the VISTA portal, ABS Census and VicRoads CrashStats.

Tony Smith’s presentation will be focused on the western tunnel portal of the proposed East-West motorway, and consequent disruption of showcase areas of Royal Park West, significant Parkville West housing assets and ‘black comedic duplication of the lower Moonee Ponds Creek disaster zone’.

After presentations and discussion we expect to head to a nearby cafe/restaurant for those interested in a meal and further conversation.

Coal seam gas and the term “fracking” came to the media fore with the 2010 release of the film Gaslands in the US. This is now a very real and present issue in Victoria, with rural communities mobilising to Lock the Gate on the mining companies. They are calling on the government to extend its moratorium on coal seam, shale and tight gas extraction until more robust research data is available on the risk to people and the environment.

Friends of the Earth and Quit Coal will share four enlightening short films that will detail the process of fracturing and explain the issues facing our northern cousins in New South Wales and Queensland where alternative gas extraction is already happening.

The final short film, Gippsland is Precious, will provide an overview of the immediate Lock the Gate campaigns underway across Victoria, leading into a Q&A panel. This night is a great opportunity to explore how you can stand with rural Victorian communities to protect our food, our water supply and our climate from destructive coal and gas mining.

FRESH, good and fair food needs a fresh, new and innovative event to demonstrate its value to all Australians. That’s why the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance are bringing together communities, social entrepreneurs, creative individuals, smart food businesses and even local government across Australia to celebrate the work of Australia’s fair food pioneers – the women and men doing the vital work of creating a fairer food system for all of us.

“It’s a new national event, Fair Food Week”, said Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance spokesman, Nick Rose. Across the country during Fair Food Week there’s a wonderful diversity of events that will attract, intrigue and entertain you: food forums, food workshops, food films, farmers’ fairs, food swaps, community garden and farm tours.

“What we call ’fair food’ is food that is produced in ways that are fair to all and that guarantee nutritional health to everyone in Australia’s food supply chain – Australian farmers, Australian food processors, small to medium size food retailers and, most importantly, we who eat the products of these enterprises”, explained Mr Rose. “Fair food that the farmer has been paid properly for and that is sold through a retail system that is not dominated by the supermarket duopoly that controls 80 percent of Australia’s grocery sales, but that is sold through a truly free market that includes thriving small to medium food businesses to give us – Australia’s eaters – authentic true choice in what we buy and where we but it. It’s good, healthy and tasty food that all Australians have access to irrespective of their income and where they live. This includes Australians living with disability, illness, those living on a government allowance, such as pensioners, and those in remote indigenous communities… the more then five percent of our people who presently live with an insecure and unhealthy food supply”.

Fair Food Week will highlight the fresh, innovative ideas found in the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance’s Peoples’ Food Plan, Australia’s first crowdsourced policy directions document and the result of democratic, consultative forums held across the country.